


Better In Pieces

by igrockspock



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Adulting is hard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Getting Together, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5032666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with Matt getting armor is that Claire never sees him anymore -- until she's the one who needs help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better In Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a Kink Meme prompt asking for hurt/comfort where Matt is the one who takes care of Claire.

The trouble with Matt getting armor is that Claire never sees him anymore.

At first, she's grateful. Life is easier without the constant worry about a blind vigilante dying on her couch. Also, it's cheaper: she'd replaced a surprising number of bloodstained cushions and bed sheets in the past few months, which had made for some awkward conversations next to the garbage chute. Plus, she gets to sleep through the whole night, and she doesn't have to fight the constant temptation to start a relationship with yet another dysfunctional human being. 

It's just -- well, when she told Matt that she'd always be there to sew him up, she'd imagined that he'd always need sewing up. She hadn't imagined she might never see him again.

So when Matt's number lights up her caller ID at seven o'clock on a Thursday night, she answers without any of her usual second thoughts. And, okay, her heart's beating faster than it should, but hopefully not even Matt's hearing is sensitive enough to pick up on that over the phone.

"Claire?" Matt sounds uncertain. "If the offer of stitches is still good, I could - I could use some help."

"Isn't it a bit early in the day for streetfighting?" Claire asks. She's already unearthing her medical kit from a pile of books and papers. At first, she'd kept it at the ready, but since Matt stopped calling, it had been gradually engulfed by clutter.

"It wasn't exactly a fight," Matt says. There's a familiar wry note in his voice, and Claire catches herself smiling.

"You can tell me all about it when I get there."

***

When she arrives, Matt's sitting on the couch in his business clothes, cradling his hand in his lap. There's a streak of blood down the front of his pants.

"I cut myself," he says, sounding surprised. "I was washing the knife, and my hand slipped."

There's a faint pink flush across his cheekbones that Claire definitely does not find attractive.

Claire pulls the hand toward her. It doesn't look bad, at least not by Matt's standards, although it definitely needs some stitches.

"I would have sewn it up myself, but it's my right hand, so..."

Claire raises her eyebrows, not that Matt can see. "Sewing yourself up? That's new. And here I thought I hadn't heard from you because you found a nurse who'd actually sleep with you."

Claire regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth. Matt's romantic life is none of her business, and anyway, she's the one who rejected him. 

Matt’s flush deepens for a moment, and he shakes his head. "Believe it or not, I haven't needed a nurse since I got the armor," he says, looking faintly contrite.

Claire contemplates apologizing and decides against it; it will only make things awkward, and anyway, Matt's not actually a nice guy. She'd do well to remember that. They fall into a familiar silence as Claire disinfects the cut and begins to sew it shut. She can feel Matt -- not watching her, exactly, but sensing her or whatever he does. The intensity of his attention is overwhelming but oddly comforting. It's ironic that a blind man can make her feel so, well, _seen._

The stitches are done fast. It's a deep cut, but not a long or a wide one. Claire's sorry to be done so fast, which is fucked up. It would be easy to find a way to stay. She could say, _the least you owe me is dinner_ , and Matt would make her something or take her somewhere. And then she'd do what? Sleep with him? No, she'd decided against that a long time ago. She forces herself to let go of Matt's wrist and stand up.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye. Until the next time you hurt yourself," she says, giving him a crooked little smile that he can't see.

He doesn't try to convince her to stay, and she does her very best not to be disappointed.

***

But the next time she sees Matt, he's not bloody or bruised. In fact, he's dressed in his normal civilian clothes, wearing dark glasses and carrying the white cane. She almost doesn't recognize him when she bumps into him at Starbuck's. _Literally_ bumps into him, which makes her feel like an ass because she really should’ve done a better job watching out for the blind guy.

" _Shit_ ," she mutters, which is a terrible apology, but when she looks up he's smiling.

"Claire?" he asks, reaching out to steady her. "What are you doing here?"

"What?" she grumbles. "Now I've got to justify my coffee habit to you?"

"No," Matt says evenly. He's still holding onto her arm, and he pulls her forward so they're not standing in the doorway. "Just the choice of neighborhood."

"Jury duty," Claire mutters. The courthouse is looming in the distance, and somewhere inside is a dingy room where she can spend eight hours waiting for jury selection with fifty other bored and probably objectionable New Yorkers. "I guess it's stupid to ask a lawyer what they're doing near the courthouse."

"I have a case going to trial," he says, and then there's an awkward pause when they both realize they have no idea how to have a normal conversation. And then his phone reminder chimes and a tinny little voice announces he's expected at the courthouse in five minutes. 

He smiles ruefully. "I should probably get going. But it's been nice seeing you, Claire. Really nice."

For some reason -- probably because she's an idiot -- she catches his hand and squeezes it. It bothers her to think that he can't see her smile, so he doesn't know she's happy to see him too.

"Yeah, Matt," she says, "You too."

The whole week she's stuck on jury duty, she keeps hoping she'll hear the tap-tap-tap of his cane in the hallway, but the one time she does, he's too far away to talk to.

***

Two nights later, she wakes up to a familiar tapping on her window. Matt is on the other side, dressed in his full armor, with blood running down his face. She slides the window open to let him in, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"What happened this time?" she mutters. 

The medical kit is buried under a pile of papers again, and she digs it out while Matt strips off his helmet and his gloves.

"Ambush," he says tersely. "One of them got in a good hit."

Claire wonders if she wants to know how many there were, then decides against it. Instead she presses a cloth on the cut under his cheekbone to stop the bleeding.

"You should probably see a plastic surgeon about this," she says, even though she doubts Matt will bother. "I'm going to close it with glue, but it might still scar."

"No stitches?" he asks, and Claire tries to decide if he sounds disappointed. She'd wondered if he got off on it before, and then she'd wondered if he liked it because it was the only way to get physically close to another human being. Both were heartbreaking in their own way.

"Well, the stitches would leave a pretty impressive scar. It would certainly up your street cred with the vigilante crew," she says. "I'm not sure if it's a good look for your day job though."

Matt snorts faintly. "Glue it is."

He lies down obediently when she nudges him. Working on his non-life-threatening injuries is more intimate than she expected. Maybe that was what had thrown her for a loop when she'd stitched up his palm a few weeks ago. When Matt was half-dead on her couch, she didn't have room to think about anything more than keeping him alive, and he turned his whole consciousness inward to fight off the pain. Now he's a warm and strong presence under her fingers, she can feel his breath on her skin as she works. His eyelids drift shut at the first touch of her fingers on his face, and she has to fight the urge to run her fingers through his hair. It's more unruly than ever after being trapped under his helmet, and she finds the sight oddly endearing.

Instead, she taps him on the shoulder. "There you go," she says. "All done."

But she doesn't have the heart to watch him vanish through the window as quickly as he'd come. "I've got some leftover Chinese in the fridge," she says. "Want some?"

***

The next time Clare sees Matt, it's because she calls him. It's after midnight. She'd worked a double shift, and it's only adrenaline keeping her awake. Well, that and the fact that her mom's getting older. Except 'older' isn't the right word for what's happening. Her mom is _old_. It's not about white hair or wrinkles anymore; it's about nasty falls in the bathroom and not having enough food in the apartment because she's too tired to walk to the supermarket. And really, it's nothing that Claire can't handle. She can pay Santino to look in on her mom on the days when she can't swing by, and doing some extra grocery shopping shouldn't be a problem. But really, a retirement home would be better, except all the double shifts in the world won't pay for that, and --

Screw it. There's no way she's going to sleep. She grabs her phone off the night table. There are probably a lot of people who would answer her phone calls late at night. Sane, calm, rational people. Shirley from the hospital. Her cousin upstate. Even a couple friends from high school. But she can think of one person who's almost certainly awake right now, and if he's not, she owes him a late night wake-up call.

Matt answers on the first ring. "Claire?" he asks, sounding panicked. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," she answers hastily. She feels stupid already. Of course Matt would worry; the only other time she'd called him, she was being kidnapped by Russian thugs. 

"Are you sure you're alright?" Matt asks. There's enough concern in his voice to almost make her forget he's a guy with a Messiah complex and a serious anger management problem.

"Mostly. Maybe seventy-five percent alright. But I can't sleep, and I could use some company," she says. _Shit_. That sounds like a booty call. "Do you want to come over and watch a movie or something?" she adds. Maybe that sounds a bit less like _have sex with me_. Of course, she'd just asked a blind guy to watch TV with her. Apparently she's not a brilliant, sensitive medical professional at one o'clock in the morning.

"I'm on my way," Matt says without any hesitation. Because he's a hero who saves people. Or he thinks he's about to get laid. 

If it's the latter, he'll be disappointed. And if it's the former...well, then she has a better friend than she'd realized. Either way, she should probably put on a pot of coffee. And some pants. Pants are important when you've invited a man to your apartment late at night and you're determined not to have sex with him in a moment of weakness.

Matt arrives still wearing a button down. His tie is loose around his neck, and his chin is covered with stubble. It's a good look for him -- but then, personal appearance had never been a problem. It’s all the _other_ things about him that Claire doesn't find attractive.

"Glad to see I didn't interrupt your avenging," Claire says. "I'd feel terrible if I'd stopped you from saving tourists from the criminal element."

Matt gives her a wry half smile. He looks as tired and ragged as she feels. 

"I was trying to tie up a few loose ends on a coerced confession case," he says. "I didn't realize how late it was until you called."

"There's no end to the amount of injustice to fight in the world, huh?" she says, stepping aside to let him in. 

At first, having an uninjured Matt in her apartment is as awkward as their conversation at Starbuck's had been. Casual hang-outs aren't really a thing they do, and it only takes about five minutes for Claire to realize that the only food she has are a couple stale Twinkies and assorted condiments. At least watching a movie isn't as horrible a suggestion as she had thought it would be. Netflix comes with audio description now, and Matt listens through an earbud plugged into his phone while she watches with her iPad in her lap. At some point, she leans her head against Matt's shoulder, mostly because she wants to and also because holding back her longing for physical contact is part of what’s making the evening awkward.

Her mind is drifting when Matt tightens his arm around her shoulder and asks, "Claire? What's the other twenty-five percent?"

"Twenty-five percent of what?" she asks absently, leaning into Matt's warmth.

"The twenty-five percent of you that's not okay," he says, sounding tentative. "You don't have to tell me, but I'd like to know."

Oh. That. 

"Just my mom," she says, fiddling with the fringe on her blanket. "She's getting older. Falling down. Forgetting things. The usual, I guess."

She waits for Matt to rattle off a list of precautions and safeguards she can take, like medical alert bracelets and non-slip decals in the bathtub. That's usually what happens when elderly parents come up at work.

Instead Matt asks, "Was it always just the two of you?"

Claire looks up, more surprised than she probably should be. Matt looks vulnerable in a way she hasn't seen before. Usually he's fighting stoically through pain, or arguing with her about the moral implications of freelance crime fighting. Now he looks tentative, maybe even nervous. She reaches up and squeezes his hand where it's wrapped around her shoulder.

"I never met my dad," she says. "My mom always said it was better that way. So yeah, just me and her. How did you know?"

"I guessed. I know what it's like to - to stay up at night worrying about someone only you can take care of," he says, angling his head down toward hers. His gaze rests somewhere near her lap, and Claire wonders if it's easier to talk to him just because he can't see the expression on her face. 

"Thanks," Claire says, reaching up to squeeze his hand again. Maybe this was what she needed - not suggestions, just empathy.

"I would help you, you know. If you needed it," Matt says. Maybe he can sense her hesitation because he adds, "You helped me. I probably owe you my life, actually, so if you need something -- for your mom, or for you, or someone to watch movies with at night, I could do that."

Claire sighs. "Would it surprise you to know I'm _terrible_ at asking for help?"

"Not particularly," Matt says. "Maybe I'll just help anyway."

He pulls her more tightly against him, and that makes it seem okay to shift a little so that her head is resting on his chest and she can hear the steady thump of his heart in her ear. The last thing she remembers is him telling her he won't leave until she falls asleep. When she wakes up, he's gone, but his jacket is draped around her shoulders.

***

It's not that Claire doesn't want to ask for help, at least, not exactly. It's more that there's nothing Matt -- or anyone else -- can actually help with. What's she supposed to say? The new charge nurse is a bitch, and it's hard to complete her paperwork and leave the hospital in time to check on her mom. It's a sucky situation, and Claire has to deal with it. Pretty much the story of her life.

One night, about a week after Matt's visit, Claire comes home to discover a container of chicken soup and a loaf of bread outside her door. It's nothing special -- in fact, it's pretty obviously from Whole Foods -- but it's still a hell of a lot better than whatever she was going to order from the Chinese place across the way. 

She flops down on the couch with the remote control and cracks open the soup container. The aroma makes her stomach growl, which isn't really surprising, considering that her 'lunch' had consisted of a barely edible pack of Slim Jims from the break room vending machine. The soup container is empty and most of the bread is gone before she even thinks to text Matt.

_Please say you're responsible for the soup at my door. If it's from the weird guy down the hall, I should probably call poison control right now._

Matt answers fast. _Thought you could use something to eat. If there was poison, I didn't put it there._

Claire snorts. _Of course not. Who will sew you up next time a ninja stabs you?_ She eyes Matt's jacket, which is still draped over one of her living room chairs, and adds, _You ever going to get this jacket out of my way?_

_I'll come by on my way home. Sorry for the inconvenience._

Is she flirting with Matt? Maybe. But then, she's entitled to a little fun now and again. When he knocks on her door, she greets him with the jacket dangling from her hand. 

"Smooth, leaving your jacket here so you'd have a reason to come back."

"It worked, didn't it?" he says.

Claire rolls her eyes, not that Matt can see it. She's going to have to find a new way to show derision.

"Well, as long as you're here, you might as well have dinner," she says, rifling through the take-out menus on the coffee table. "You want Thai or Chinese?"

Instead of Netflix, they listen to music -- or they try, anyway. Matt’s playlist consists almost exclusively of violent rap songs, and Claire presses the stop button right after _I’ma pick the world up and drop it on your fucking head._

“Careful,” she says. “This doesn’t fit your mild mannered lawyer persona.”

Matt’s thumb grazes hers when he takes the phone back from her hand. “I’m a survivor of the urban jungle,” he says, but he looks so ridiculously innocuous Claire can’t help but laugh. He shakes his head. “Or I’m just an average white guy with an aggressive workout playlist. New subject. How was your day?”

Claire snorts. “Seriously? That’s awfully mainstream of you.”

“I’m a mild mannered lawyer, remember? I can do normal.” He touches the top of her hand lightly. “Really, tell me about your day.”

Claire swallows. It shouldn’t feel remarkable for someone to ask her that question, but Mike -- the one who kept all the secrets -- sure as hell never had. Her mom asks sometimes, but she seems confused by the answer most of the time, which Claire doesn’t want to think about right now. So she tells Matt about the guy who came in with a snow globe up his butt, and the homeless lady who shows up every Tuesday morning to give the nurses marigolds. Then he tells her about the more colorful winos he’s fished out of the drunk tank, and when the last of the evening light has faded from the sky, he collects his jacket and leaves.

It’s all very nice and normal, except for the part where she knows he left her apartment to fight crime. In the morning, three women arrive at the ER, saying a masked man had freed them from a trafficking ring. When she comes home that night, she realizes that Matt had left his tie slung across the back of her chair. He comes to collect it, orders them a pizza with his credit card, and leaves it on the coffee table. After that, he forgets his scarf. Claire picks it up, intending to toss it on the pile of clean laundry she never has time to fold, and quickly discovers it's the softest thing she's ever touched. It glides over her hands like butter, and she wraps it around her neck without even thinking about it.

Then she calls Matt.

"Your plan backfired," she says. "I'm keeping the scarf. Maybe forever. Definitely wearing it to work tomorrow."

"Good," Matt says, fast and definitive, like that's what he'd intended all along. 

Claire isn't prepared for the way that makes her stomach drop. She wonders if he can hear her surprised little inhalation over the phone before she remembers herself and says, "Well, now you don't have anything to come back for. How are you going to get in my apartment now?"

"I could bring over dinner," he says. "I made something in the crockpot last night. There are leftovers."

"Crockpot leftovers," Claire echoes. "You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

"I'll throw in an eight dollar bottle of wine," he says. "I'll be over in an hour."

True to his word, Matt shows up with a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz that retails for $7.94. She's pondering a snarky comment when he pulls a four-quart Tupperware bowl out of his grocery bag. He'd brought leftovers, all right -- enough for her to keep in her fridge for a few dinners, and still have some extra to leave at her mom's. 

"Did you make all that for me?" she blurts, staring at the gigantic bowl. The aroma wafting out is homier than, well, pretty much anything she's eaten in the last year.

Matt shrugs. "I have to do something unambiguously good once in awhile, right? And Foggy was overjoyed that I bought groceries, so it worked out well for both of us." He turns toward her, his eyes resting on the wall just above her head. "Netflix added audio description to that show you like. The one about the girl who lived in the bunker? We could watch it, if you want."

"There is no way you like that show, but if you're offering to torture yourself for my sake, I'm not saying no," Claire says.

Curling up with Matt on the couch and watching Netflix is starting to feel strangely familiar. She glances around the apartment and realizes how much of his presence is here, even when he's gone. She'd cleared away all the piles of clutter from the living room so he wouldn't trip. There's a designated corner for his jacket and his cane, and she'd started putting kitchen utensils away in exactly the same place every time.

Maybe Claire shouldn't feel this appreciative of a guy who brings her food and watches TV shows he doesn't like. Her cousin would say it's a sign that her standards are too low -- and for the last few years, yeah, they kind of have been. But then, Claire doesn't really need a dozen roses or fancy dinners. Half the time, the fuckers who give them to you are trying to cover up for something anyway. In her experience, the people willing to do the everyday favors are the rare ones.

She pokes him with a toe as the closing credits play. She'd already spotted the book on the kitchen counter next to the grocery bag, waiting to be left behind. "When are you going to stop leaving your shit all over my apartment?" she asks.

Matt grins at her. "As soon as you learn how to call and say you don't want to be alone."

***

She thinks about Matt on her walk to her mother's apartment the next day, and okay, maybe she'd thought about him all day at the hospital too. It's pretty obvious that she likes him. _Likes_ likes him, and not just in a doomed attraction sort of way. Matt has to know that, right? She's not exactly being subtle about it, and anyway, he can probably hear it in her breath or heartbeat or something. So why isn't he _doing_ something about it? But when she thinks about it, the answer's pretty obvious. She'd told him twice that she wasn't interested, and Matt's the kind of guy who respects boundaries. Reason number two hundred eighty-four that he's not the ghost of her past mistakes, come around to haunt her again. Which means _she's_ going to have to be the one to make the whole big messy declaration, and it's a good thing she's arrived at her mom's place, because she is _so_ not thinking about this right now.

"Mama?" she calls, sliding her key into the lock.

The door swings open before she can turn the knob, and the police are standing on the other side.

"Everything is okay," the officer says quickly, holding up a placating hand. Mahoney, his name tag says. He opens the door wider to usher Claire inside, and she's relieved to see her mother sitting calmly at the table, talking to another officer.

"Your mom thought her purse was stolen," Mahoney says. "But we found it in the microwave."

Claire frowns. Her mom's been misplacing things for awhile now, mostly little ones that didn't really matter. Most of them had turned up in reasonably logical locations, but a purse in the microwave isn't impossible for a tired old lady. She glances around Mahoney at the other officer, who's asking her mom an awful lot of questions about the date and time.

He comes over when he sees her looking. "Your mother seems pretty disoriented, ma'am. We were planning to take her to Mercy before you showed up."

"I work there," Claire says, suppressing her irritation. The hospital seems like an overkill for a misplaced purse. 

Mahoney nods, looking sympathetic. "You're the expert, obviously," he says, eyeing her scrubs. "But it might be a good idea to get her checked out."

Claire nods and signs off on their report. Her mother _does_ look a little disoriented. A trip to the doctor couldn't hurt. Maybe she'd mixed up her medication.

The resident who examines her mom is unusually thorough, asking memory questions and running abstract thinking tests. Claire leans against the wall, thinking longingly of the leftover pot roast waiting in her fridge.

It's Shirley who takes her aside at the end of the exam. "Is your mother always like this, Claire?" she asks.

Claire shakes her head. "Like what?"

Shirley lays a hand on her arm. "Asking for the time over and over again? Mixing up familiar words?”

Claire nods slowly. How could she have been so fucking stupid? She’s a nurse for chrissake. A medical professional. She’d _seen_ how her mom has reminder notes for everything now, how she gets lost in conversations and forgets dates and times. She should have done better. She should have known.

“It’s alright, Claire,” Shirley is saying, patting her gently on the arm. “The signs are harder to see when it’s someone you love.”

The rest of the conversation is a blur: insurance companies, care facilities, geriatric psych evals. She leaves the hospital with Matt’s scarf tucked around her neck and a fistful of glossy Alzheimer’s brochures in her hand.

***

Claire’s cried her way through half a box of tissues before she sees Matt’s book on her kitchen counter and picks up the phone.

“You want to come get your book?” she asks, not even trying to hide the thickness in her voice.

Then she goes to splash some water on her face. She looks like shit. Of course, Matt won’t be able to see that, but it still feels good to wipe off the trails of smudged mascara running down her cheeks. She’s barely had time to change out of her dirty scrubs when Matt knocks on the door.

“You got here fast,” she says, but she’s not really surprised. He’s always come when she needed him.

“I can’t go more than twenty-four hours without Thurgood Marshall,” he says, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

For the first time since she’s known him, he doesn’t bother putting away his jacket or his cane. He just reaches for her, and she tumbles into his arms. And dammit, she’s crying _again_ , which is pointless and stupid, and she’d sworn she was going to stop. Matt doesn’t ask what’s wrong; he just rubs slow circles across her back and pulls her close, and he feels just as steady and strong as he had the day he rescued her in the parking garage.

“Will you stay?” she chokes out between sobs. It’s not really fair of her, she thinks. She ought to tell Matt that she means more than a movie on the couch or a one-night stand.

“For as long as you want,” he murmurs into her hair, and judging by how tightly he holds her, he’d figured out what he was asking for.

Maybe they ought to talk. Instead, they tumble into her bed. Matt’s face is a dim silhouette above her, its angles illuminated faintly in the glow of the streetlights. He’s moving slowly inside her when he asks, “Am I yours, Claire?”

She runs a hand over the scars on his sides, then traces her fingertips along the almost-healed cut on his cheek, and he shivers under her touch. She tightens herself around him and says, “Yes, Matt, you’re mine.”


End file.
